Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett ~ 1902. This edition: Penguin, 1991. Paperback. ISBN: 0-14-018015-X. 236 pages.
Nothing else was possible. She who had never failed in duty did not fail then. She who had always submitted and bowed the head, submitted and bowed the head then. She had sucked in with her mother’s milk the profound truth that a woman’s life is always a renunciation, greater or less. Hers by chance was greater.
Anna Tellwright, repressed and reclusive elder daughter of a stern and quietly wealthy Methodist elder who has invested wisely and well in various concerns in the china-making Staffordshire Potteries region of Stoke-on-Trent (commonly known as the Six Towns region; Bennett reduced these to Five Towns in the interests of titular appeal), has just turned twenty-one.
With that milestone passed, things start to happen for Anna all in a swoop.
She is informed by her father that she has just come into the fortune left by her deceased mother, which by his efforts has multiplied stupendously.
She acquires a courter, one Henry Mynors, an up and coming businessman who is attracted to Anna for her virginal purity, her moral worth, her modest but genuine beauty, and her undoubted skill at housewifery. (There is a telling passage in which Henry fulsomely admires Anna’s spotless kitchen and loudly congratulates himself on his upcoming acquisition of such a thrifty and cleanly wife.) The prospect of a handsome dowry adds to Anna’s appeal, though to give Henry credit he isn’t absolutely focussed on that aspect; it’s just a lovely bonus, as it were.
She is confronted by the demands of her religion to make a public avowal of salvation, which she finds impossible to carry through with, being of a deeply private and almost morbidly shy disposition. (Religion – in particular Methodism – plays a large role in this novel.)
She in invited to partake of a holiday trip to the Isle of Man, and leaves her hometown for the very first time in her life. Anna proves herself equal to the demand put upon her to enter into society and to dabble in “normal” life, something up until now beyond her modest comprehension.
She finds the courage to defy her father in redeeming an embezzler who has been driven to that crime by his harsh orders.
She receives and accepts an exceedingly suitable offer of marriage, and shortly thereafter realizes her love for another deeply unsuitable man, who she renounces without a qualm, having already given her word to the prior suitor.
All of this takes place while the rattle, crash and mechanical hum of the Potteries goes on day and night, and the inhabitants of that vast industrial complex scuttle about their various businesses, and the miser broods and berates, and his meek daughters – Anna and small half-sister Agnes – inch their ways towards the modified freedoms of their futures…
Inspired by Balzac’s similarly themed 1833 novel, Eugénie Grandet, Arnold Bennett produces an ambitious and occasionally melodramatic portrait of the people and places he knew very well indeed, being himself a child of the Potteries until his departure for London as a young man and his subsequent establishment as an author.
Bennet described this novel as his “sermon against parental tyranny”, and it is all of that. Though Anna renounces the elusive call of “true love”, she does advance towards an essential form of self-development beyond the restrictions imposed upon her by her emotionally brutal father; we have even higher hopes for her younger sister Agnes, who may just accompany Anna out from under the sternly repressive paternal influence.
The detail in Anna and the Five Towns is rich and engrossing. Its passages are heavy with description, and the thing is loaded with deeper meanings. It serves as a multi-layered depiction of a particular time, place and mindset equal to anything Bennett’s compatriot Thomas Hardy produced.
Perhaps not to everyone’s taste – it is an undoubedtly “dated” sort of novel – but I found a lot to appreciate in this accomplished production of its time.
My rating: 8/10
Leaves & Pages 
I read this not long ago, too, and liked it a lot. I also read Eugenie Grandet this year and agree that the themes are similar. Another similar book is Anita Brookner’s debut novel, A Start in Life. Thank you for your lovely review. I enjoyed reliving the story.
I have been wanting to read more Brookner; thank you for the hint. This is an interesting theme – the “awakening” of the downtrodden – which is always thought provoking and incidentally makes for a great story. Either tragic or comic or a blend of both. We do like to see bullies faced down, don’t we?
Yes! It’s a theme I can come back to over and over again. The heroine of A Start in Life is a Balzac scholar and the parallels with Eugenie Grandet were mentioned which prompted me to read the Balzac. I hadn’t read any Balzac before but want to read more as I found it compelling and accessible. I’m reading Brookner in order of publication over a period of time, one every month or two.
I was once teaching this novel to a small class of non-traditionally-aged, Appalachian students, about 6 women and one man. The women were using the word “abusive” to describe the father’s treatment of Anna. The man said that he didn’t think it was abusive because he didn’t hit her. The women all vociferously disagreed, and when I started hearing the pronoun “you,” I called time out. He later told me that he had gone home and told his wife all about it, and she said, “Well yes–of course it’s abuse!” He was a great guy, and it was a learning moment for him that he openly acknowledged. This is what literature can do. Bennett’s reputation took a big dent after Virginia Woolf attacked his novels, but Margaret Drabble is a big fan. I think Clayhanger is better than Anna.
It’s absolutely abuse, and I very much fear our Anna is stepping into just another form of subjugation in Henry’s house, due to her long conditioning under her father’s rule. But perhaps she will be inspired to grow and reach her fuller potential with Agnes to nurture and bring forward? Perhaps…
I quite like Arnold Bennett, though I haven’t read all of his works by a long shot. Virginia Woolf’s opinion is not one I myself find myself particularly swayed by! 😉
I read Arnold Bennett’s Grand Babylon Hotel just last week and really enjoyed it! Anna of the Five Towns certainly looks like something I’d be interested in.
My, you are certainly being prolific these days! And I enjoy reading every one of them. Thank you.
I am playing catch-up on quite a few of these recent posts – I read the books earlier in the year and am just now writing about them. So it’s not quite as wonderfully ambitious as it looks! 🙂
I do thank you for the kind comment – and that goes out to everyone else who has been so encouraging, too! – I am glad you are enjoying these.
It’s fun catching up with your catch-up posts! Oh my goodness, I love Bennett! He isn’t perfect, but I might return to Anna one day. Her connection with the factory-owner tenant is very sad and I don’t envy her engagement to the businessman, though she is realistic about it and expects less than I do.
No, not perfect, but in general very readable and often very humorous – he has a good strong sense of the ridiculous, and his more seriously emotional sections are never mawkish, though sometimes things are very close to it. I wonder what future that lost relationship in Anna would have had? In this case Anna’s realistic attitude will likely prove to be her salvation; she has kept to her strong personal principles and doubtless will find solace in that versus spending too much time over might-have-beens.
I haven’t read this (or ‘Clayhanger’) but I did read ‘Old Wives Tale’ years ago and would recommend it.
Read this twice–love Anna going to the wonderful Isle of Man on holiday.
Isn’t it grand?!
You’ve certainly sold this one to me. I loved Bennett’s Old Wives’ Tale – I think it’s a great and under-rated novel, and his women characters are marvellous, I was very impressed by them. So I’ve been looking to read something else by him, and this sounds very interesting.
Oh, I think you’ll like it! Lots of substance to our female lead in this one, though she misses a few things in relation to the men in her life. She does the best she can, and handles herself well. The setting is really interesting; lots going on with that, too.